Chapter 10: Caras Lithgweth

The first impression one gets on seeing the city of Caras Lithgweth is that it seems bland and monochromatic. Every building, every street, every wall, every tower is fashioned of the same color of stone. So uniform that the eyes play tricks; walls and floors merge, and everything blurs into a confusing jumble of shadows and perspective. Making matters worse, the streets are perfectly straight, evenly spaced, and arrayed in a logical and efficient fashion that only makes it all the easier for the uniformity to twist vantage points in on themselves. In most cities, to find your way around, you ignore the people, the wains, the horses, the dangling laundry, and the thousand other oddments of city life, and focus on the buildings and streets; but here, you have to do the opposite, using the location of these objects to orient yourself and identify how shadows reveal walls or archways, turns and joinings.

From within the wain, peering out through gaps in the slats, the Haehînbór had little opportunity to see this. Instead, they could only stare at a thin slice of a wall as it rolled past, the wain creaking its way through the streets at a surprisingly brisk pace. The first thing that Oyana noticed was that the route was circuitous and winding, and as she watched more closely, it was clear why. Virtually every person they passed was Ortheri. She knew there were many Haehînbór in service here, but the wain-driver was choosing a path that avoided the places they were likely to be, for reasons she could only puzzle over.

Kumzu's eyes focused on something else. "The walls," she whispered, awestruck. "They're sand."

"What of it?" Yîgeke asked sourly.

"No, not sandstone… Sand. It's… it's moving."

It was Qemik who answered, his native excitement rising up. "I've heard stories of this!" he exclaimed. "The sorcerers of the north, the Blue Caste, built the city anew. Do you recall the tale?" Oyana was growing more and more impatient with Qemik, but he didn't wait long enough for her to try to stop him, and it wouldn't've worked anyway. "The old city was on the hilltop north of here, but it was destroyed, almost utterly, in a sandstorm that lasted ten days and ten nights. All that remains is one ruined tower, the Spire of Last Days."

"Yes, we all know that," Yîgeke barked. "That is where I was supposed to cast the Sixth Spear to the clouds, whatever that means."

"The king at the time, this is before they were called Ortheri Baugcaun, he escaped, but only barely. The queen, the Ortheri Rhîs, wasn't as lucky. They say the sands flayed her flesh from her bones in an instant while she still lived. So the king, he called his advisor…"

"The Ortheri Cowr," Kumzu said. Apparently she was listening raptly, though she was still staring out the gap in the wain's boards.

"Yes, though again, that title wasn't used yet," Qemik answered. "He was called, and charged to find a means that a city could be built, which could never be torn down by a sandstorm again, at any cost. He spent years seeking wisdom from the farthest lands, and at the last, they say he struck a bargain with the Blue Caste sorcerers from the north. Scores of sorcerer toiled for years to craft a spell that captured a sandstorm itself within a crystal, the very crystal that sits atop the Ortheri Baugcaun's scepter to this day, they say."

"And thus, the Ortheri Baugcaun can use his pet sandstorm to fight off another that threatens his city?" Oyana asked, thinking it unwise to encourage Qemik in spinning his tall tale, but also thinking she might bring him to the point, and thus, the conclusion sooner.

"No!" Qemik answered, loud enough to earn a barked order to hush from the wain-driver. "The sandstorm was captured, but only its heart, the spirit of the sandstorm itself, is in the stone. You've heard tales of a river-spirit who is bound to a river? The Westerlings say their five rivers each have a spirit for a sister. It's the same thing: the sandstorm has a spirit, and that spirit is trapped in the scepter, but it is not the sandstorm itself, it is simply bound to it. The Ortheri Baugcaun holds the scepter and its sorcery, and controls the spirit, and through her, the sandstorm, forcing it to shape its winds as walls and towers and streets. The entire city, it is the sandstorm. The sand in the walls is always moving because the walls are simply the winds, holding the sand in place. And from this is fashioned towers and palaces and granaries and streets, and even the aviary."

"I've never heard something so absurd in my life," Oyana protested, "and I've known you for most of it, so that's saying a lot."

"And yet," Kumzu said, "if you look, you can see the sand in the walls is swirling, just as sand in a storm, though the wall itself is solid as stone. Stranger tales have been told, of sorcerous powers in the lost ages of the past. And I have heard the tale of the river-maidens, the Green Ladies."

Before Oyana could lodge another protest, or even decide if she might believe this far-fetched tale, Qemik called out eagerly once more. "Look, the aviary! The Fourth Spear!"

"It's never been agreed for certain that the aviary is what the Fourth Spear speaks of," Oyana answered wearily.

"But it must be," Qemik protested. "The Fourth Spear shall fly, cast by a mighty bow, to shatter glass and set loose a flock of white birds across the sky of Caras Lithgweth. The only white birds in the city are the doves that had been kept as pets by that very queen who perished. She had left orders they, and all their get, be tended. The few that survived kept returning to the site of their long-lost cote, so the king included an aviary when this city was shaped, and those doves, and their young, and their young, have been kept there ever since, in memory of the lost Ortheri Rhîs. They are kept in with glass windows that might be broken with a well-placed bowshot. Where else could you find white birds freed by glass?"

While Oyana could hardly argue with that, she wanted to. She ached to rail at Qemik, to reach over somehow, even if meant breaking the chains to do it, and physically vent her frustration on his body. Why even worry about the Fourth Spear? The Ortheri knew, had long known, of the prophecy. The First Hand was chained and being brought to an uncertain but clearly unfavorable fate, probably her death. Hope had fled, sand in its breath. And still he rambled like a child telling bedtime stories about things too grand to be believed. Someone should shut his mouth with a closed fist, and she wished, at that moment, it could be her.

She was still choosing her words, hoping to be just acerbic enough to silence him, but not so much as to elicit another round of his grating voice, when the wain suddenly tilted onto two wheels and nearly toppled over.

From within the wain they had no idea what was happening. Ulgî was hanging almost suspended in the air as the wain yawed, his considerable weight held by the chains on his wrists and ankles. Qemik was thrown bodily into Yîgeke, whose elbow was now lodged in Oyana's gut. Kumzu still had her eye to the gap in the boards when they veered towards the ground; she was shrieking. It seemed for sure the wain would grind itself to pieces, and its occupants with it, as it wobbled and teetered at an untenable angle while still careening forward at a perilous pace. Outside there were screams and shrieks, some from people and some from horses.

The moment hung motionless and then, with a lurch, the wain righted itself. The wheels nearly cracked as it slammed back down and almost tilted over the other way. By now it was canted at an angle and nearly wedged between one wall and some sort of stall that stood in the street. They could hear more sounds of fighting as they slowly, achingly righted themselves. Although Ulgî had had the worst of the incident's trauma, due both to his size and the happenstance that he'd been on the side of the wain that had risen up, he was nevertheless testing the chains to see if they'd worked loose in the jostling, but it seemed they hadn't.

The sounds of struggle outside came to a stop only a few seconds later, punctuated by the sound of someone having the wind knocked out of him and crumpling to the ground. "Wait," an Ortheri voice barked. "Don't kill him. The Ortheri Cowr will want him with the others."

They waited silently in the wain for a few minutes until the back was opened, and then, in chains, bruised, bloodied, and clearly just barely conscious, Kargöz was dragged up into the wain by two of the Ortheri and affixed to one of the hooks.

No one knew what to say for a few moments. The wagon sat still while a few quick repairs were performed, while the six of them stared at one another. But mostly at Kargöz. No one wanted to be the one that asked what had happened. Not even Qemik, though his reasons might have been different. At last, as the wain started to move again, Kargöz coughed and said, "Well, that didn't go as I'd hoped."

It was as if the pressure in Oyana suddenly burst. "What didn't? What in the name of the Six Spears is going on?"

"I tried to rescue you. I suppose I failed."

Qemik was shaking his head. "You? You're the one who betrayed us in the first place!"

Kargöz seemed baffled by this. "Betrayed? What?"

"When we were being captured, you fled, like a coward. You're probably the one who told the Ortheri where we were, and about the prophecy." Qemik was railing at Kargöz but his eyes were on Yîgeke, who was looking away from both of them the best she could, trying to hide inside herself, trying to shut it all out.

"What? No, I saw that they were going to capture us. I thought we'd stand a better chance of getting free if one of us was already free, to rescue the others. I've been following the wain at a distance all along, but I couldn't even catch up, let alone overpower the six Ortheri warriors that have been walking with it. I kept in the shadows in the city and followed; no one notices a slave on his way somewhere, not even a tired and bruised one. When I saw where you were heading, towards the palace of the Ortheri Baugcaun…"

Oyana said in a dry, bitter voice, "Is that where we're heading?"

"Well, yes, it's…" Kargöz tried to turn around. "Oh, I see. You can't really see the city from here, you can't see the palace that's ahead. It can be naught else but that of the Ortheri Baugcaun."

"We can see a bit through the gaps," Kumzu interjected.

"So I ran along streets that went parallel. Everything's all in straight lines. Did you notice the walls? They're made of…" Kargöz stopped at the wordless silencing stare from Oyana, and gulped. "Anyway, I got ahead of the wain, got up onto a roof, and pushed a keg down into the path so that the wain would have to stop. Only I didn't time it quite as well as I hoped, and the wain rolled up onto it. I was jumping down, planning to land on the roof and pull the door open. I thought if I could get Ulgî free, he could get us the rest of the way. But the wagon canted and I hit the roof while it was swinging. It tossed me into the wall, and then the Ortheri were on me." He sighed and added, "It wasn't a very good plan, even if the keg had fallen where I meant. But it was all I could think to do."

"It might have worked anyway, had Ulgî not been on that side," Oyana said. "The wain would have broken to pieces if it tipped over at that speed, but any of us who survived might have gotten free. But his weight brought it back down."

Qemik was fuming. He'd invested a lot in the idea that his rival was a traitor, and it was plain he was trying to think up some way that it might still be true, that this could be some complicated ruse. Before he could think of one, Yîgeke asked, "Why even bother?"

This took Kargöz back a moment. He started to answer, stopped, started again. Finally, he said, his eyes on her, "Because I couldn't abandon you."

"Because I'm the First Hand?" she asked.

"No. I mean, maybe. I'm not even sure if I believe that. I'm not sure what to believe. But isn't it enough that it be because of who you are, and how I feel about you?" He added as an afterthought, "And about all of you. You're all my friends."

Qemik snorted. "How you feel about her? You weren't there. When they were beating us down, I was beside her. I was taking blows meant for her. And you were off somewhere hiding like a coward. You only changed your mind later because you thought you could win her back without even getting a bruise."

"Just because I didn't stand there getting pummeled doesn't mean I don't care," Kargöz spat. "What she needed was someone with their wits about them, someone who could help her when she needed help. What good did you do her, stuck in here with no chance of freeing her?"

"You mean, the same place you are?"

"At least I had a chance to get her free. You never did. You'd rather get beaten up and look like you're defending her, than actually defend her. Well, if that's what matters, I stood up to her attackers a fortnight ago, when you were nowhere to be seen, so I suppose we're even on that count."

"That is, if you weren't the one who brought them to her," Qemik exclaimed. "You—"

"Stop!" Yîgeke's voice grated like sand across stone, and her eyes flashed like a storm brewing. "Both of you. It doesn't matter. We're all going to be dead before the sun sets. I don't want to spend my last day under the sun with the two of you trying to put me in between you. Now be quiet. I don't want to hear another word." Qemik and Kargöz both almost started to talk, but her eyes narrowed and they both bit back their words and averted their gaze.

There was nothing to keep them company the rest of the way to the palace other than the creaking of the wain, the aching of their bones, and the bitterness of their private thoughts.